that can be used against us. and america helps balance that out. the important thing and i think why america is so strongly behind us on this, this is clearly a case of self-defense. i mean, until we took action that we did, we had a situation where the population of southern israel, civilian population, was on the receiving end of missile after missile coming from the gaza strip from hamas. and this wasn't going on for days, this was going on for weeks and even months. it had to stop. there's no reason why israel's civilians should have to live in bomb shelters. >> is a ground invasion imminent, mark? or do you expect that will be avoided? >> listen, i unfortunately and you understand this, alex, cannot go into what military operations we might or might not do, because those have to be confidential. you have to have an element of surprise. you have to keep your opponent guessing. but it's important to remember that our operation is not offensive in a strategic sense. we're not interested in capturing more territory or something like that. our goal